hedonistbot

Because they were afraid of the effect a funny joke could have if it was unleashed on the general public. Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbnvkMRPKM&feature=youtu.be...

Here is a good summary from Techcrunch. TLDR: the EO shouldn't invalidate Privacy Shield protections, but the whole framework is flawed and does not guarantee privacy of EU citizens. The relevant parts:

> The spokeswoman has now sent us a statement in which the EC asserts that Privacy Shield “does not rely on the protections under the U.S. Privacy Act”.

> Critics of Privacy Shield –– including the lawyer who brought the original challenge against Safe Harbor — have consistently argued the arrangement contains the same fundamental flaws as its invalidated predecessor, given ongoing U.S. government agency surveillance programs accessing European citizens’ data.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/trump-order-strips-privacy...

Dear HN, please scale down the panic.

>President Trump’s Executive Order calls for federal agencies in the U.S. to ensure that their privacy notices make clear that Privacy Act protections extend only to citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. Importantly, Article 14 of the Order explicitly states that the federal agencies must do so in a manner that is “consistent with applicable law.” In the context of EU-U.S. data transfers for law enforcement purposes, the Judicial Redress Act constitutes applicable law, and thus President Trump’s Executive Order, as written, should not impact the Judicial Redress Act’s extension of the Privacy Act’s protections to citizens of the EU. As a result, absent further action from the U.S. government, we do not expect this Executive Order to impact the legal viability of the Privacy Shield Framework.

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2017/01/28/privacy-shield-...

Based on the journalism example in the introduction I was expecting the unintended consequence to be for the professional drivers to lose their jobs. Which will be more impactful on the labor market than any changes in journalism so far and can completely eliminate "driver" (truck, taxi, etc) as job title. Moreover, this is a part of a broader trend of automation that is real but still left out of mainstream political discussion. If Trump hopes to bring back employment with traditional protectionism, he'll just incentivise faster replacement of human workers with robots and automatic systems. I believe this is a more important topic for discussion than the social and antisocial aspects of driverless cars.

And I am saying that no changes (law or not) can be effective in fighting corruption as long as the incentives for it are present (broken institutions, culture of accepting bribes, mainly cash economy). Also in the business of government changes are usually implemented through laws. Hence my usage of the term.

Edit: The evidence I provided was that current legal framework is explicit enough in its treatment of corruption and yet corruption is still present which suggests that the problem is not in the rules.

Also, I don't like how you equate parallel economy to black economy. Those are different terms in Economics and the majority of economic transactions outside of regulations and laws are not bribes but a part of the informal sector (grey economy) [1]. And India is considered one of the countries with biggest grey sector in the world [2].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_sector

[2] - http://www.ibtimes.com/india-has-second-highest-rate-shadow-...

Alternatives methods for corruption will always exist. If you ban one method another will be used shortly after and those most capable of switching are usually the people with biggest illegal funds. Bribes are illegal and yet they are common, then why do you think that another law will help? A better treatment would be to better apply the current law but this too will fail if the culture of corruption is not diminished. Changes on this scale are not achieved in a fortnight but I agree that the Indian government is showing resolve to work on the problem.

My main take away from my economics degree was that every human created system is gameable. You need to have actors willing to participate in the system otherwise they will find a way to evade it. You cannot change a culture of corruption with a simple monetary trick (I speak as someone living in a country with relatively high corruption).

>... and now Wikileaks has invited the whole internet to come play Richelieu with them

But why do you think that the whole internet wants to play the part of Richelieu, everyone is allowed to choose the role they want and wikileaks does not hide the context of the emails, everyone is perfectly able to check the whole correspondence. If anything the mass media is hiding the context because of their format and time limits.

I love it when engineers try to fix social problems. When the constructs of the solutions are human-made then they are gameable and therefore not a solution. And also why is this suddenly a problem? I would wager that if Hillary won there would be much less talk of "bias" and "misinformation".

Kaine was probably promised the VC role when he resigned from the DNC and was succeeded by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As far as I remember he even recommended her for the post. Everything was in place for a Hillary nomination except Berney...

Yes, I believe that the NYT are projecting the final outcome of the popular vote based on all those West Coast votes that are still being counted.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae...

Admittedly not the only factor but a huge contributor.

...and bomb *Libya, and fund opposition "moderate" beheaders in Syria, and supporting the military coup in Egypt, and antagonize Turkey and harbor the alleged mastermind of the coup. I'm sure I'm missing a lot more.

To expend further - not a single mention of Saudi Arabia as a major actor and sponsor of radical Islam (Wahhabism), Israel is mentioned in passing and Turkey is only mentioned as an emigration destination and a "porous" border, not a major actor with huge interest and ambition in the region. Full disclosure: I stopped reading after part 2 and searched for the relevant actors and that's what I found. Correct me if I've missed some hidden gem of insight from the NYT "journos".

This piece was a huge waste of time. Following the personal stories of a number of individuals in most of the Middle East countries does not give any information to the reader about any of the geopolitics or power plays in the region. It just leaves the reader confused and depressed that nothing can be done and we should probably leave this matters to people more knowledgeable. Is this some new form of journalism. And to see this in a NYT publication...

Also NY Times has so much *to answer for in their coverage of the events that it kind of make sense that they are avoiding any real analysis of the issues.

I might be wrong here but aren't most US companies flush with cash these days? I would assume that they use their cash reserves for the buybacks and not debt. Are there any stats on what is used to finance the buybacks?